大学英语六级分类模拟题462_真题-无答案

大学英语六级分类模拟题462 (总分334,考试时间90分钟)

Part Ⅰ Writing

1. Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write a short essay on the following situation. You should write at least 150 words but no more than 200 words.

Suppose you have a new classmate from abroad and he or she is not so familiar with Chinese culture and customs. This year, you are going to invite him or her to your home to spend the Spring Festival with you and your family. Write him or her an invitation letter and introduce to him or her about the traditional Chinese Spring Festival.

Part Ⅱ Reading Comprehension

Section A

The Advantages of Being Helpless

A. At every stage of early development, human babies lag behind infants from other species. A kitten can walk slowly across a room within moments of birth and catch its first mouse within weeks, while its human counterpart takes months to make her first step, and years to learn even simple tasks, such as how to tie a shoelace or skip a rope. Yet, in the cognitive race, human babies turn out to be much like thetortoise(乌龟) in Aesop\"s fable: emerging triumphant after a slow and steady climb to the finish.

B. Yet, this victory seems puzzling. In the fable, the tortoise wins the race because the hare takes a nap. But, if anything, human infants nap even more than kittens! And unlike the noble tortoise, babies are helpless, and more to the point, hopeless. They could not learn the basic skills necessary to their independent survival. How do human babies manage to turn things around in the end?

C. In a recent article inCurrent Directions in Psychological Science, Sharon Thompson-Schill, Michael Ramscarand Evangelia Chrysikou make the case that this very helplessness is what allows human babies to advance far beyond other animals. They propose that our delayedcortical development(皮质发育) is precisely what enables us to acquire the cultural building blocks, such as language, that make up the foundations of human achievement. In the same way, they suggest, our ability to learn **es at the price of an extended period of cognitive immaturity.

D. This claim hinges on a peculiar and unique feature of our cognitive architecture: the stunningly slow development of theprefrontal cortex(前额皮质), or PFC. The PFC is often referred to as the

\"control\" center of the brain. One of its main functions is of selectively filtering information from the senses, allowing us to attend to specific actions, goals, or tasks. For this reason, cognitive \"control\" tasks are thought to be one of the best assessors of PFC function and maturity.

E. TheStroop task(斯特鲁普任务) serves as a simple assessor of PFC function in adults. The task involves naming the ink color of a contrasting color word: for example, you might see the word \"red\" written in green ink, in which case you have to say \"green\". Tricky or not, healthy adults can **plete the task with only minor hesitation. Children, with their immature PFC\"s, are a different story. Typically, the younger children are, the worse they are at solving Stroop-like tasks, and under the age of four, they outright fail them. While young children are sensitive, apt learners, and often appear to fully understand what is being asked of them, they are unable to mediate the conflicting demands present in these sorts of tasks, and thus fail them, time and time again. Three-year olds simply cannot direct how they attend to or respond to the world.

F. Thompson-Schill and her colleagues suggest that this inability to direct attention has important consequences when it comes to learning about uncertain events. For example, imagine you are playing a guessing game: You have to choose one of two options, either A or B, one of which leads to a prize, and the other does not. After a few rounds, you notice that about 3/4 of the time the prize is at A, and the rest of the time it is at B, so you decide to guess \"A\" 75 percent of the time and \"B\" 25 percent of the time. This is called probability matching, and it is the response pattern most adults tend to adopt in these circumstances. However, if the goal is to win the most prizes, it is not the best strategy. In fact, to maximize the number of correct predictions, you should always pick the more frequent outcome (or, in this case, always pick \"A\").

G. Interestingly, if you were playing this kind of guessing game with a kid, you would see that he would employ the maximization strategy almost immediately because they lack the cognitive flexibility that would allow them to alternate between A and B. Fortunately for them, in this guessing game scenario, maximization is the right choice.

H. While it may not be immediately obvious what this has to do with language learning, it just might have everything to do with it, because language relies on conventions. In order for language to work, speakers and listeners have to have the same idea about what things mean, and they have to use words in similar ways. This is where **e in. Young children, as it turns out, act like finely tunedantennas(天线), picking up the dominant frequency in their surroundings and ignoring the static. Because of this—because children tend to pick up on what is common and consistent, while ignoring what is variable and unreliable—they end up homing in on and reproducing only the most frequent patterns in what they hear. In doing so they fail to learn many of the subtleties and characteristics present in adult speech (they **e to learn or invent those later). However, this one-track learning style means that what they do learn is highly conventionalized.

I. The superiority of children\"s convention learning has been revealed in a series of ingenious studies by psychologists Carla Hudson-Kam and Elissa Newport, who tested how children and adults react to variable and inconsistent input when learning an artificial language. Strikingly, Hudson—Kam and Newport found that while children tended to ignore \"noise\" in the input, systematizing any variations they were exposed to, adults did just the opposite, and reproduced the variability they encountered. Children\"s inability to filter their learning allows them to impose order on variable, inconsistent input, and this appears to play a crucial part in the establishment of stable linguistic norms. Studies of deaf children have shown that even when parental attempt sat sign are error-prone and inconsistent, children still extract the conventions of a standard sign

language from them. Indeed, the variable patterns produced by parents who learn sign language offers insight into what might happen if children did not maximize in learning: language, as a system, would become less conventional. What words meant and the patterns in which they were used would become more unstable, and all languages would begin to resemblepidgins(混杂语言). J. While no language is completely stable, there is a balance to be struck between an individual\"s expressivity and the conventions that underpin it, and children clearly play an important role in maintaining this balance. Children may learn the established characteristics of **munity, but they do so only because these forms are stable in their input. They are unlikely to adopt highly unusual or characteristic forms or sequences that they\"ve heard only rarely, and when they themselves make errors, they are similarly unlikely to incorporate these errors into their language use over the long run.

K. Individual societies are built upon these kinds of cultural and linguistic conventions, and a vast array of them. As social animals, human babies must somehow master not just \"culture and language,\" but the specifics of their culture, and their language. Explaining how babies manage to learn all of this information is a formidable task. The research reviewed here reveals one advantage that nature may have conferred on human infants: when it comes to conventionlearning, children\" sinability to think unconventionallyor flexibly may be of huge benefit. Indeed, a number of neurological studies suggest that children who often exhibit marked language delays and characteristic language development experience a massive overgrowth of the prefrontal cortex over the first two years of life.

1. In terms of language learning, children are more likely to focus on the most frequent expressions they hear.

2. Human babies **pared to the tortoise in Aesop\"s fable because they share a similar process in their respective races.

3. According to Carla Hudson-Kam and Elissa Newport, when learning an artificial language, children and adults react differently to variable and inconsistent input.

4. A recent article in Current Directions in Psychological Science shows that helplessness enables human babies to develop better than other animals.

5. studies of deaf children have shown children can still learn the conventions of a sign language even if the signs used by their parents are error-prone and inconsistent.

6. The function and maturity of prefrontal cortex (PFC) can be assessed by \"cognitive control\" tasks.

7. Children play an important role in maintaining the balance between an individual\"s expressivity and the conventions that support it.

8. When it comes to Stroop task, age makes great differences.

9. Children tend to benefit a lot when learning conventions because they can\"t think flexibly.

10. According to Thompson-Schill, the fact that children can\"t direct attention leads to important outcome when learning about unsure events.

Section B

Passage One

At the heart of the debate over illegal immigration lies one key question: are immigrants good or bad for the economy? The American public overwhelmingly thinks they\"re bad. Yet the consensus among most economists is that immigration, both legal and illegal, provides a small net boost to the economy. Immigrants provide cheap labor, lower the prices of everything from farm produce to new homes, and leave consumers with a little more money in their pockets. So why is there such a discrepancy between the perception of immigrants\" impact on the economy and the reality? There are a number of familiar theories. Some argue that people are anxious and feel threatened by an inflow of new workers. Others highlight the strain that undocumented immigrants place on public services, like schools, hospitals, and jails. Still others emphasize the role of race, arguing that foreigners add to the nation\"s fears and insecurities. There\"s some truth to all these explanations, but they aren\"t quite sufficient.

To get a better understanding of what\"s going on, consider the way immigration\"s impact is felt. Though its overall effect may be positive, its costs and benefits are distributed unevenly. David Card, an economist at UC Berkeley, notes that the ones who profit most directly from immigrants\" low-cost labor are businesses and employers—meatpacking plants in Nebraska, for instance, or agricultural businesses in California. Granted, these producers\" savings probably translate into lower prices at the grocery store, but how many consumers make that mental connection at the checkout counter? As for the drawbacks of illegal immigration, these, too, are concentrated. Native low-skilled workers suffer most from **petition of foreign labor. According to a study by George Borjas, a Harvard economist, immigration reduced the wages of American high-school dropouts by 9% between 1980-2000.

Among high-skilled, better-educated employees, however, opposition was strongest in states with both high numbers of immigrants and relatively generous social services. What worried them most, in other words, was thefiscal(财政的) burden of immigration. That conclusion was reinforced by another finding: that their opposition appeared to soften when that fiscal burden decreased, as occurred with welfare reform in the 1990s, which curbed immigrants\" access to certain benefits. The irony is that for all the overexcited debate, the net effect of immigration is minimal. Even for those most acutely affected—say, low-skilled workers, or California residents—the impact isn\"t all that dramatic. \"The unpleasant voices have tended to dominate our perceptions,\" says Daniel Tichenor, a political science professor at the University of Oregon. \"But when all those factors are put together and the economists calculate the numbers, it ends up being a net positive, but a small one.\" Too bad most people don\"t realize it. 1. What can we learn from the first paragraph?

A. Whether immigrants are good or bad for the economy has been puzzling economists. B. The American economy used to thrive on immigration but now it\"s a different story. C. The consensus among economists is that immigration should not be encouraged.

D. The general public thinks differently from most economists on the impact of immigration. 2. In what way does the author think ordinary Americans benefit from immigration? A. They can access all kinds of public services. B. They can get consumer goods at lower prices. C. They can mix with people of different cultures. D. They can avoid doing much of the manual labor.

3. Why do native low-skilled workers suffer most from illegal immigration?

A. They have greater difficulty getting welfare support. B. They are more likely to encounter interracial conflicts. C. They have a harder time getting a job with decent pay. D. They are no match for illegal immigrants in labor skills.

4. What is the chief concern of native high-skilled, better-educated employees about the inflow of immigrants?

A. It may change the existing social structure. B. It may pose a threat to their economic status. C. It may lead to social instability in the country. D. It may place a great strain on the state budget.

5. What is the irony about the debate over immigration?

A. Even economists can\"t reach a consensus about its impact. B. Those who are opposed to it turn out to benefit most from it.

C. People are making too big a fuss about something of small impact. D. There is no essential difference between seemingly opposite opinions.

The idea of public works projects as a device to prevent or control depression was designed as means of creating job opportunities for unemployed workers and as a \"pump priming\" device to aid business to revive. It was conceived during the early year as of the New Deal Era (1933-1937). By 1933, the number of unemployed workers had reached about 13 million. This meant that about 50 million people-about one third of the nation-were without means of support. At first, direct relief in the form of cash or food was provided for these people. This made them recipients (接受者) of government charity. In order to remove this stigma (耻辱) and restore to the unemployed some measure of respectability and human dignity, a plan was devised to create governmentally sponsored work projects that private industry would not or could not provide. This would also stimulate production and revive business activity.

The best way to explain how this procedure is expected to work is to explain how it actually worked when it was first tried. The first experiment with it was the creation of the Works Project Administration (WPA．. This agency set up work projects in various fields in which there were many unemployed. For example, unemployed actors were organized into theater projects; orchestras were organized for unemployed musicians, teaching projects for unemployed teachers, and even writers\" projects for unemployed writers. Unemployed laborers were put to building work or maintaining roads, parks, playgrounds, or public buildings. These were all temporary \"work relief\" projects rather than permanent work opportunities.

More substantial work projects of a permanent nature were organized by another agency, the Public Works Administration (PWA．. This agency undertook the planning of construction of schools, houses, post offices, dams, and other public structures. It entered into contracts with private construction firms to erect them, or it loaned money to local or state governments which undertook their construction. This created many jobs in the factories producing the material as well as in the projects themselves, and greatly reduced the number of the unemployed.

Still another agency which provided work projects for the unemployed was the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC．. This agency provided job opportunities for youths aged 16 to 20 to work in national parks or forests clearing land, guarding against fires, building roads, or doing other conservation work. In the event of a future depression, the federal government might revive any or all of the above methods to relieve unemployment and stimulate business.

6. It was at the beginning of the New Deal Era that public works projects ______. A. were ignored by most American socialists B. proved its advantages over other plans C. were given a serious consideration D. were put into use immediately

7. According to the passage, during the New Deal Era, the public works projects might ______. A. make a great leap in guiding the economic development B. help those unemployed to resume respect and dignity C. urge private businesses to employ more workers

D. prevent government from lending money to the unemployed 8. The Works Project Administration could ______.

A. relieve the burden of both the unemployed and the government B. satisfy the need of people from various fields of the society C. meet the need of most people who were once white-collars

D. not offer people jobs which would support them for a whole life 9. Compared with WPA, the Public Works Administration ______. A. got private businesses involved in the restoring of economy B. encouraged the local governments to make concrete plans C. offered jobs in all the aspects concerning construction

D. stimulated the economy by lending money to local governments 10. The Civilian Conservation Corps mainly offered jobs ______. A. to give more opportunities to various age groups B. to foster the spirit of American youths C. that are laborious to youngsters

D. under the name of relieving family burdens

Passage Two

Volcanoes are the ultimate earth-moving machinery. Eruptions have rifted continents, raised mountain chains, constructed islands and shaped the topography of the earth. The entire ocean floor has a basement of volcanic basalt.

Volcanoes have not only made the continents, they are also thought to have made the world\"s first stable atmosphere and provided all the water for the oceans, rivers and ice-caps. There are now about 600 active volcanoes. Every year they add two or three cubic kilometers of rock to the continents. Imagine a similar number of volcanoes smoking away for the last 3,500 million years. That is enough rock to explain the continental crust.

**es out of volcanic craters is mostly gas. More than 90% of this gas is water vapor from the deep earth: enough to explain, over 3,500 million years, the water in the oceans. The rest of the gas is nitrogen, carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide, methane, ammonia and hydrogen. The quantity of these gases, again multiplied over 3,500 million years, is enough to explain the mass of the world\"s atmosphere. We are alive because volcanoes provided the soil, air and water we need.

Geologists consider the earth as having a molten core, surrounded by a semi-molten mantle and a brittle, outer skin. It helps to think of a soft-boiled egg with a runny yolk, a firm but squishy white

and a hard shell. If the shell is even slightly cracked during boiling, the white material bubbles out and sets like a tiny mountain chain over the crack—like an archipelago of volcanic islands such as the Hawaiian Islands. But the earth is so much bigger and the mantle below is so much hotter. Even though the mantle rocks are kept solid by overlying pressure, they can still slowly \"flow\" like thick treacle. The flow, thought to be in the form of convection currents, is powerful enough to fracture the \"eggshell\" of the crust into plates, and keep them bumping and grinding against each other, or even overlapping, at the rate of a few centimeters a year. These fracture zones, where the collisions occur, are where earthquakes happen. And, very often, volcanoes. 1. Why volcanoes are both significant to the globe and to human beings? A. Volcanoes motivate earth to move on. B. Volcanoes make continents, air and water. C. Volcanoes are part of nature.

D. The destruction of volcanoes is powerful.

2. What accounts for a large proportion among those things which volcanic craters bring out? A. Water. B. Gas. C. Soil. D. Ocean.

3. What rhetorical device does the writer used to describe earth? A. Contrast. B. Exaggeration. C. Comparison. D. Personification.

4. Where do volcanoes and earthquakes often occur? A. Those zones which are easily have a collision. B. Those zones which are located alongside shores. C. Far away from oceans. D. The molten core.

5. Which of the following is mentioned according to the passage? A. Different types of volcanic eruption. B. Efforts to predict volcanic eruption. C. Disaster caused by volcanic eruption. D. Causes of volcanic eruption.

Of 100 billion nerve cells in the human brain, how many form after birth? For years, the official answer was \"zero\". Scientists thought people were born with all the neurons they\"d ever have. But from 1980s, biologists overturned that doctrine, finding a reservoir of stem cells that became fresh neurons in two parts of the brains of adult birds, monkeys and humans. Those discoveries were stunning, but the next seemed to top them all. In 1999, psychologist Elizabeth Gould reported large numbers of new nerve cells in a third of the monkey brain, hinting that the same part in humans—the neocortex, which lets us reason and remember—was regenerating, too. If she was right, scientists would have to revise almost all their ideas about human memory, and doctors might someday find a way to treat Alzheimer\"s patients by simply turning on the neural-construction equipment.

The birth of new nerve cells, or \"neurogenesis\is now confirmed in the original two parts of human brain, the hippocampus and olfactory bulb. But for the neocortex, the no-neurons theory lives— and it\"s just gotten major boost.

Until December, Gould\"s study stood alone and unverified. Two neuroscientists have repeated her work in Science, but not her results. Where Gould saw new nerve cells in the neocortex, Rakic and

Konnack see only glial cells, the \"glue\" that supports neurons. But they do spot new nerve cells in the other two areas. In a January review in Nature Neuroscience, Rakic charges Gould\"s work with technical problems. Focusing on what appeared to be 100 new neurons, Rakic and Kornack found that every one was merely a new glial cell hiding behind an old neuron. Gould has a cross-sectioned image from her own study that she says shows one cell marked as new—and it\"s clearly a neuron. But Rakic has an answer for that, too. The method that identified the cells as \"new\" finds DNA synthesis, which can happen in cells that aren\"t actually dividing. Rakic says Gould\"s tests were too sensitive, tagging \"new\" neurons that weren\"t. Gould responses that Rakic\"s methods just weren\"t sensitive enough. But even she can\"t explain why that might be. Rakic\"s study squares with the idea that memory cornes not from new nerve cells but from chemicals in the spaces between old ones.

Gould\"s team are circulating response to Rakic and Kornack and recreating two studies side by side to see if small differences in methods are to blame. Others are also redoing the tests; a Japanese team\"s unpublished results echoes Rakic\"s, while another team\"s support Gould\"s.

Meanwhile work on less controversial new neurons marches forward. Neuroscientist Fred Gage, who\"s just wrapped up a study of the function of new hippocampus nerve cells, says that\"s as it should be. Still, until more studies confirm Rakic and Komack, he\"ll keep a close eye on the neocortex debate.

6. What doctrine was overturned according to the 1980\"s biologists? A. The human brain contains 100 billion nerve cells. B. The nerve cells can be generated after birth. C. The nerve cells can\"t be generated after birth. D. The human brain has a reservoir of stem cells.

7. What contribution was made by Gould to the research of nerve cells? A. Stunned the scientists.

B. Provide a way to treat Alzheimer\"s patients. C. Established the neural construction equipment.

D. If the result is right, the scientists have to change their ideas and treatment for Alzheimer\"s patients may be found.

8. What was the problem with Gould\"s research result according to Rakic? A. It was glue that Gould found.

B. The new nerve cells exist in other parts of brains. C. The work has technical problems.

D. Gould mistook the old cells as the new ones. 9. What can we know about Rakic\"s study?

A. It is the opposite with what scientists always believe.

B. It shows that **es from chemicals in the spaces between old ones. C. It shows that **es from new nerve cells.

D. It tells the relationship between memory, new nerve cells and chemicals in the spaces between old ones.

10. What does Gould\"s team do in response to Rakic and Kornack? A. They ask a Japanese team to repeat their experiment. B. They redo the tests.

C. They ask other teams to support them.

D. They recreate two studies side by side to see if small differences in methods are to blame.

Part Ⅲ Translation

1. 慈禧对外国人万分惧怕，正像她对国人无比傲慢一样。她在河南停留了很长一段时间，到了保定又逗留(halt)多日，好不容易才回到北京。据说，在这漫长的旅途中还发生了一件趣事。一位地方送给慈禧一只猴子，她颇为高兴，竟让人给那猴子穿黄马褂(yellow mandarin jacket)。后来得知有的发出了“人不如猴”的感慨，慈禧才发现自己的决定有些荒唐(whimsical)，于是又命令给随行(escorting officials)每人一件黄马褂。得到这殊荣之后，大家真不知道该感谢慈禧还是感谢那只猴子。